A protein in mosquito eggshells could be the insects’ Achilles’ heel

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Mosquito researchers may have hatched a new plan to control the bloodsuckers: Break their eggshells.

A protein called eggshell organizing factor 1, or EOF1, is necessary for some mosquito species’ eggs and embryos to develop properly, a new study finds. Genetically disrupting production of that protein in Aedes aegypti mosquitoes caused about 60 percent of their normally dark eggshells to be pale. And shells lacking EOF1 often collapsed and were more porous than normal. In experiments, almost no mosquito embryos in the EOF1-disrupted eggs hatched into larvae, researchers report January 8 in PLOS Biology.

EOF1 is produced only by Aedes, Anopheles and Culex mosquito species, biochemist Jun Isoe of the University of Arizona in Tucson and colleagues discovered. Those varieties of mosquitoes can transmit life-threatening diseases such as malaria, Zika, dengue and West Nile virus (SN: 11/10/18, p. 22). The protein could be a good target for genetic engineering techniques or insecticides, which may help control populations of disease-carrying mosquitoes without killing harmless insects, the researchers speculate.

On eggshells
In these scanning electron micrograph images, the shells of Aedes aegypti eggs lacking a protein called EOF1 (right column) have round bumps that are six times as large as those on shells with normal amounts of the protein (left column). The abnormal eggshells are also leaky, fragile and often collapse.

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